ASU Studios Brings Human Intelligence Back to the Future of Learning
At LULU inside the Hammer Museum, ASU Learning Transformation Studios convened Angus Fletcher, Alice Waters and 100 leaders across education, civic life, philanthropy, the arts and the creative economy to explore human intelligence, public value and the future of learning.
On May 8, ASU Learning Transformation Studios gathered more than a guest list. It created a room with a purpose.
The luncheon took place at LULU inside the Hammer Museum, a setting shaped by art, food, public dialogue and creative exchange. That choice mattered. Guests were not seated in rows for a formal presentation. They gathered around tables, shared a meal prepared by Alice Waters and her team, and entered a conversation about what education needs now.
For Studios, the format was part of the work.
“We were created for moments like this,” said Alan Arkatov, senior advisor to ASU President Michael Crow and executive director of ASU Learning Transformation Studios. “Moments when the existing lanes are too narrow. The systems are under pressure. The answer is not going to come from one sector, one institution, or one discipline.”
The room reflected that belief. Participants included leaders from K-12 and higher education, civic agencies, philanthropy, arts and cultural institutions, media, health, technology, community organizations and the creative economy. They came from different sectors, but they shared a common concern: education is facing a complex moment, shaped by artificial intelligence, social media, civic distrust, fiscal pressure and deep questions about how young people learn, belong and build a future.
That is precisely where ASU’s New American University model matters. ASU is designed not as a university apart from the world, but as a public enterprise connected to the needs of the communities it serves. The May 8 luncheon brought that idea into practice in Los Angeles: use place, partnership and cross-sector thinking to create new possibilities for learning.
Waters opened the conversation by connecting learning to care, attention and the senses. Drawing from her work with the Edible Schoolyard and decades of advocacy for food, stewardship and community, she reminded the room that “the senses are the pathways into our minds.” Schools, she suggested, are not only places where students receive information. They are environments where young people learn what adults value.
Fletcher then moved the conversation from artificial intelligence to human intelligence.
A story scientist and New York Times best-selling author, Fletcher challenged guests to distinguish between probability and possibility. Probability, he explained, is based on what has happened before. Possibility is different. It is what has never happened before, but could.
For Fletcher, that distinction matters because education cannot only prepare learners to repeat, optimize or predict. It must also help them imagine, create, adapt and act. In an age when machines can generate the probable, human learning must protect the capacities that make the possible real.
The afternoon then moved from ideas to practice. Guests were invited to listen differently, delay the quick “why,” and notice what surprised them. Later, tables considered a prompt inspired by Fletcher’s work: imagine it is five years from now and something in education has changed in a way no one fully predicted. What exception do you notice? What would happen if that exception became the rule?
The discussion that followed moved quickly from theory to lived experience. Renata Simril of LA84 Foundation and the Play Equity Fund shared that her table focused on the role of play and movement in helping young people build belonging, connection, learning, civic identity and a stronger sense of self. Fletcher extended that idea by describing structured play as a way for children to understand their emotions and engage their imagination.
Other exchanges widened the frame. Inna Faliks, professor and head of piano performance at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, reflected on how music can give children permission to feel, make meaning and connect with stories that might otherwise seem out of reach. Pedro Noguera, dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, asked how schools can break open the “tight box” that too often defines learning. Another table returned to a practical question at the center of education: how do we find the spark in every child and design systems that help develop it?
Taken together, the conversation pointed to a clear idea: young people need more than access to information. They need environments that help them build confidence, agency, imagination and the capacity to shape what does not yet exist.
That is where Studios does its work.
ASU Learning Transformation Studios connects people and capabilities that should know one another but often do not. It convenes when a challenge requires more than one sector, one discipline or one institution. It amplifies ideas and partnerships that deserve more oxygen. And it helps translate conversation into next steps.
The May 8 luncheon was not a pause from that work. It was a demonstration of it.
In Los Angeles, where education, culture, technology, civic life and creativity meet every day, ASU Studios is helping create the conditions for new ideas to move from conversation to action. Not by claiming certainty, but by asking better questions. Not by staying in one lane, but by bringing the right people into the room. Not by treating AI as the whole story, but by returning attention to the human intelligence that learning depends on.
What question should education have the courage to ask next? Connect with ASU Learning Transformation Studios to help shape the next conversation.